Dear Santa,

The following is the list of things you seem to have forgotten to bring me this year [I understand the economy is rough; but seriously, could you make sure you don’t have a few items in your sleigh that you forgot to deliver last night???]:

1. 100,000 mint condition LPs, across multiple genres and in order thank you, all previously Loricrafted with the 4-step Walker Prelude cleaning process. [if not this year, perhaps next Christmas?]

2. Enough Nordost ODIN, Jorma PRIME and Audio Note PALLAS to cable out all 3 of our rooms [and maybe the 4th we are thinking of adding] in either 100% pure ODIN (or PRIME or PALLAS) and in any kind of mixed-cable madness we might want to hear someday. [perhaps this is just stuck in the chimney? I’ll go look.] [Nope. Doesn’t seem to be there. Hmmmmm… Not sure what the problem is here.]

3. A blank check and the name of reputable and competent contractors to add several rooms to our house for the following speakers, one pair for each room. which we would also appreciate very much if you could deliver ASAP: Marten Momentos, Kharma Grand Exquisites (and/or Midi Grande Exquisites), Wilson Alexandria II, Acapella Sphaeron, Audio Note Sogon (at least ONE of these new rooms has to have corners for the AN speakers, unlike our current house), [Oh, and FedEx or UPS is OK, too, if, you know, Rudolph and the other reindeer are a little pooped from last night’s hectic delivery schedule].

4. 1000s of free plane tickets – which come with free room and board at the Boulderado, so that we can fly in everyone who wants to hear their favorite music on any or all of the above setups. [or. hey, you can just fix the real-estate mess, make everyone giddy in the process, and get us a place in the big city. You know, a city that people are already traveling to in the normal course of living their lives?]

Well, Santa. Four things on my list. Not so bad. You’re doing a great job so far, and we know World Peace is not something you can help with, but it seems to me that the items on this list are exactly the kind of things you are so awesome at.

But please HURRY; because right now Neli thinks *I* am Santa, and boy oh boy, this list is going to take me some amount of time to work through…

Happy Holidays, Santa [and to all of you out there, too! Happy New Year!]

[Crossfitness is all the rage in fitness land. It consists of highly varied workouts done at warp speed (as quickly as possible) and focus on exercises that are actually useful in the real world. WOD stands for Workout Of the Day].

1. Big Amp Pump: Lift 90lb. Audio Note Ongaku. Take 2 steps forward. Put it back down… carefully.
a. Advanced: carry it up and/or down 10 stairs
b. Advanced: put it down to your right and/or left (comes in handy because of all those amp-stand and cable footing issues)

2. Rack Shuffle: Lift 50 lb component off of a rack and put it gently onto the floor. Lift 50 lb component up off the floor and insert it into a rack. (aka the “cables still don’t reach blues”)
a. Advanced: Do not slide it (feet often stick to and or rub the finish off of quality equipment rack shelves) but instead stick out your rear to counter-balance the weight as you extend your arms and component into the rack.

3. Cable Contortion: connect (correctly!) the 20 ends of 10 cables and power cords to components on a rack that is too close to the wall. (aka “Squished Skull” and “Why oh Why Can’t My Arm Bend That Way Just For a Second” blues)
a. Advanced: use only the big ELROD power cords (when cold and stiff) and suitably stiff interconnects [stiffest ones we have here are Odin and they aren’t too bad] .

4. Component Packman: take 10 components off the racks, amps and speakers and pack them in their shipping cartons. Then unpack them and set them up (aka lets exhibit at a show or someone else’s listening room – essentially 1,2 and 3) .

5. Dusting Time: move all your LPs and CDs and dust the shelves they are on.
a. Advanced: re-order them [this is hard for us since we have 2+ major locations for CDs and 3+ for LPs scattered throughout the house].

——

Now, according to way all the crossfit sites do it, we are supposed to time ourselves and say we can do, say, 4, in, like 26 minutes or something.

We do 1, 2 and 3 all the time.

We have NEVER done 5 🙂

You know, I was thinking about how dangerous these shootouts are becoming.

We do them in the evening, and sometimes we order out some food [usually Vietnamese] and we draft somebody [Neli. :-)] to go pick up it and bring it back.

We then consume mass quantities and listen to a CD or LP kind of casually and chat about how cool it would be to have X, Y or Z for the next shootout.

Then it is back to the shootout proper: listening, going up to the system and switching cables, powercords, whatever back and forth. More listening.

Ponying up to the system, my tummy being overly full to the point of me whining about it to everybody who will listen [that would be, as it always is, nobody] I then had this terrible waking nightmare:

The button pops off my shorts, goes sailing through the air like a button who really hated being under extreme pressure all these years, and strikes one of the tubes on the most lovely sounding, exquisite, amps we have ever heard.

And the tube *explodes* from the impact. Glass is everywhere. Sparks are flying. The lights in the kitchen are flashing off and on.

I start wondering if Neli is going to kill me with knife or pistol.

Then an extremely unlikely and not very nice event occurs. The exploding tube generates some kind of freak surge and the dying amp takes out not one but both speakers. Drivers are now sailing across the room in cannonball like trajectories.

One lands in the bowl of Red Curry Stew with extra Tofu, and splashes Red Curry Stew with Extra Tofu all over the stack of LPs we had brought upstairs for the demo.

The other hits the floor and starts rolling across the room like the old Bridgestone Tire commercials, continues until it encounters the stairs going down to the other listening room – which it then starts plopping down ‘plop’ ‘plop’.

It then continues to go ‘plop”plop’ down the stairs in the now very, very quiet listening room as I look at everybody else in the room and present them with the stupidest grin I can come up with.

All this to say that I am resolving to be on the safe side and eat less take out at our shootouts from now on.

[Even though that take out *is* really, really yummy… Hmmmm, maybe I’ll just walk up to the system sideways, facing any buttons AWAY from the system.]